TO ERO--SOMERSET, JULY 1959 (SATURDAY)
The work comes sweetly and well. I am not going to send any until I have enough to show you the new departure, which I happen to love. Also I have a great plan for unity. But as I said--in a previous letter--I am not going to talk myself out of it. I do that too much. This much I can tell you though--if it continues this well I can go home in October with a free heart, knowing I can finish it anywhere. And it is beginning to take a whole roundness of form in my mind and millions of ideas are swarming and breeding and that's the best life possible to me. It does take so long to get it though.
Now some words for Chase. It will be repetition for him since I am sure he has told me before. I should just like to have it all in one letter. About the first of the month I or rather we are going into Wales. I wish Chase would lay out an itinerary. I want to catalogue it in my mind so I can have access to it in memory wherever I go to finish it.
I'm glad Shirley likes the Triple Quest. That's its name by the way. I assure you the Lancelot is much better. Finally I have unlocked the door.
Now let me tell you about a miracle, of the kind that happens here. Day before yesterday I was writing about a raven, quite a character and a friend of Morgan le Fay. Yesterday morning at eight I was at my desk and there was a great croaking outside my door. I thought it was a giant frog. It awakened Elaine sleeping upstairs. She looked out the window and there was a huge raven pecking at my door and croaking--a monster bird. The first we have seen. Now how do you account for that? I wouldn't even tell it if Elaine the Truthful hadn't seen it also.
TO CHASE--SOMERSET, JULY 3, 1959
(from Elaine S.)
Yesterday we drove through Plush Folly, a new addition to our place-name list. It is in Dorset. We had a lovely afternoon. John is taking one of his knights questing along the country and wanted some geographical details. Now that's the way to take advantage of being in England. We drove down to below Dorchester and climbed Maiden Castle, a vast hill-fortress which goes back to 2000 B.C. It's a marvelous and enormous flat-topped hill with 8 ditches, deep and steep-sided. You could sure defend one hell of a lot of people up there. From the top, we could look down on Dorchester and see clearly the form of the Roman city. The four Roman entrances to the town are now lined with trees and called The Walks.
We also went to Cerne Abbas to see the Dorset Giant, the several hundred feet high man carved out in the chalk hill. He is ferocious and swings a club over his head. He also is extremely phallic. John says some ancient people put him there as a symbol of fertility. I think they put him there to scare the tar out of passing ladies, who would then go home and say to their husbands, "Don't stand there and tell me you are going to fight them? "
I have your letter about Bodmin Moor and Caerleon on Usk, along with the map you marked, in the car with our other maps and guide books. John says he wants to go to both places soon.
We are up to our ears in Devonshire clotted cream, as this is the height of the strawberry and raspberry season. Our berries come from Discove garden--and sometimes I make our own clotted cream. Whenever we are given cream by our friends, I stand it in a shallow pan on the warm part of the stove for six hours, then move it to the cool stone floor of the kitchen for several hours. When it becomes clotted, I skim it and chill it in the fridge and serve it with berries. Delicious!--I couldn't do without the Constance Spry Cookery Book; use it daily. I have learned to make a proper Indian curry. The ingredients are bought at the Bombay Emporium in London. We will have a curry dinner party in the fall.
I hope to have ms. tomorrow. I went by and jogged Mrs. Webb about it Wednesday. She was typing a passage in which John has a maiden wash a knight's undergarments and hang them on a gooseberry bush to dry, before they spent the night in the forest. She wanted to know if I knew that in England babies come from under gooseberry bushes! He didn't and was delighted.
TO ERO AND CHASE--SOMERSET, JULY 13, 1959
Of course, I did no writing while away. Always think I will but I don't. However, lots of thinking. I'm going to throw out my beginning of Lancelot and start again because I think I know it now. And after the Lancelot, I rather think I'll go back to the beginning and start over. Maybe I have my boy now. It does take time.
Chase, thanks for the Maiden Castle work. I am still drawn to my own suspicion. This is mainly because I know how it worked in Mexico. Spaniards came in, heard an Aztec word, and named the place the word sound in Spanish. There are hundreds of them. For instance Cuernavaca--cow horn. Aztec name was Cuanahuatl, which sounds a little like cuernavaca only it means the Place of the Eagles. But it was the sound that mattered, not the meaning. And I suspect that Maiden in Maiden Castle is a sound in a previous language and I'll bet it is the Indo-European root word mei meaning changed or heaped or not natural. And the great earthworks are "heaps."
But all of this is only interesting. I am trying to work on the "people" of the stories. I'm glad the Triple Quest pleases you a little, Chase. At least it gives some reason for the three damsels. The Lancelot as I see the beginning now begins to make some sense to me and even in terms of the reason for the Grail quest, which comes later. It has always been considered that first comes the Grail and then the Quest. But suppose a quest was required and the Grail was placed as a target. But I am not going to do more trial runs. I'll send it when it is finished as a fait accompli. Perhaps I have done too many dry runs. But I feel better about it.
TO ERO--SOMERSET, JULY 25, 1959
I sent the very first part of Lancelot to you yesterday after having received your wire. I think it is wise to send it. If it should happen to be lost in the mail I have a carbon, faint but quite readable as a safety factor. And I never had anything lost anyway. This ms. is beginning to be somewhat like what I want. You will see that little by little, while adhering to the story, I am putting my own construction on matters which are obscure and eliminating things which either were meaningless or have become so. And if this work has some quality of a dream--why all life has that. Most people live in a half-dream all their lives and call it reality. Also, whenever by suggestion I can tie the story to the present by developing a situation which was true in both, I have done so. And since this is a curious decorative story I have tried to give it some quality of medieval painting, a little formal but not always. Mostly I have had to make the people come alive. In this first part and it is far from finished, Lancelot has not yet had to face his dual self. He is morally untested. That's why I love Lancelot I guess. He is tested, he fails the test and still remains noble.
You are worried about Vinaver's influence on the kind of work I am doing. I am not sure, of course, but I think really he will be the first to applaud it. He isn't the stodgy scholar you think. And he knows the changes others have made. I would almost bet he'd approve, and if he didn't I will be so well along by then that I don't think it would have much effect. I'm beginning really to love the work for itself and I am letting what mind I have go to its own sources. Back pathing--I think the analysis of witchcraft is rather brilliant, and so far as I know--new.
I agree with you about continuing from where I am and only at the last going back to the beginning. Also I am going to try to eliminate all of the side stories in this first draft and aim right down the main line. Tristan is another story completely. It can come later. But the story I want now is Lancelot, Arthur, Guinevere--Anyway, I am going to see what I can do with that main central and unified theme. And do you know, the title of that should not be Arthur but Lancelot. He's my boy. I can feel him. And I'm beginning to feel Guinevere and out of that I will get to feel Arthur.
TO ERO--SOMERSET, JULY 28, 1959
Difficulty with work today--partly a mean decision about form and elimination. That damned Malory has got this quest in his teeth and is running mad with fighting. Also he gets so enthusiastic about curing crowds with a piece of bloody cloth that he gets all mixed up about who and why. Then he has Lancelot masquerading in Sir Kay's armor and suddenly forgets al
l about it. And I have to excavate these things and give them some point or else cut them out. About three out of eight adventures are really good, but they aren't the ones he likes at all. It is very difficult. I think I have maintained a fairish high level of interest so far in this story and I don't want to let it peter out in the usual Malory manner. Is a puzzlement. But if I just keep plugging away, I'll find a way out of it. I have to. The best way is the simplest but it takes an awful lot of thought to be simple.
I had a good letter from Shirley. I am terribly glad she likes the Triple Quest. As I know--one will choose the quest most like himself. I hope you will like the part of the Lancelot I sent. And I hope to finish this first part of the old boy's life this week and get it off to you. After this, his life grows more complicated. This first part might be called the childhood of a knight--full of wonders. But Lancelot has some pretty damned adult problems to face later, problems by no means gone from the world.
TO ERO--SOMERSET, JULY 28, 1959
I should finish this piece today if all goes well, but it is early in the morning and I will start a note to you. You will find in this whole section a greater departure than the rest. It is above all a magical section, you might call it the innocence section of a life where dragons and giants dwell, the inside ones that come later. I have eliminated a number of the more obscure adventures in Malory, but others I have greatly expanded in a way that might deeply shock the master. I have the last scene of the section to do today and it is a hard one. Also, if it should grow as some of the others have, I might not get it finished. I hope I do, but it doesn't matter. As an exercise in images this has been very interesting to do. Throughout I have tried to needle the imagination to go further, but I have no idea whether it is successful. In this part I have tried it out to be a living wall painting, formal, a little florid and unreal, and yet having all the qualities of reality. What I want it to be more than anything is believable. Now Lancelot, so far, is not a terribly complicated character, but I have one coming up today--Guinevere--who is a doodle. I think I have a line on her but we will see.
Later Sunday--Well there it is finished, dag nab it. Rough it is but it will have to stand on its own feet now. And tomorrow I'll get it off to you if the post office is open.
TO CHASE--SOMERSET, AUGUST 1, 1959
I've not written much lately because as you will see by the ms. being sent on, I've been mazed in work. I finished the last episode in the first book of Lancelot yesterday after a long and hard rough and tumble, very satisfying, and I am quite able to say without vanity that for the first time it makes sense, for that matter that the whole necromantic climate makes sense. I feel that I am getting somewhere at last. Today I have to tie the whole series of quests into one packet, develop two characters, give reasons for the whole thing and finally make a transition into the next Lancelot. But it feels good. The fury of writing has come into it. You will find it very rough but that won't matter. The essence is there and the fabric. And only you will be aware of the mass of reading that went into it. It is crammed with the medieval, I hope inserted so subtly that it does not protrude as scholarship.
I keep asking you to do things for me and here's another. I use Cross ballpoints now for writing. They are particularly good for carbons, being thin, firm, and heavy in weight. I have three of them--one pretty badly beat up. I think you know. I bought some refills and Mary Morgan sent more and still I am running out. I love to switch pencils because they seem to tire and need a rest before I do. Could you then send me by air mail two pens and the following refills--8 with the finest line they make, 3 with a medium line, and 2 with a heavy line and all with the blackest ink they make? I'm scared I will run out and I become such a creature of habit when I am writing well that a change irritates me.
Must get to work now. I would like to get the end of the first Lancelot in the mail to Elizabeth before the weekend.
TO CHASE--SOMERSET, AUGUST 9, 1959
The Trip was pretty good, I saw most of the things I wanted--largely having to do with waterways, topography colors, etc. Caerleon was fine and Usk even better.
Also there was the typed first part of Lancelot. And a remarkable good job of typing too. I haven't checked too closely but it seems very accurate. And yes, I am going to follow the Lancelot now into the second part. I see no reason to break it with the long Tristan. So--any notes you may have will be welcome. I'll have to read for a few days before I start because I will put Lancelot in no more long and meaningless adventures unless they contribute to the development of the fates of the three people.
TO ERO AND CHASE--SOMERSET, AUGUST 10, 1959
I have been waiting for you to catch up with the anachronisms, Chase. I knew all about them and put them in intentionally but that doesn't mean they won't be eliminated. I have thought so much about that. Indeed it is one of the greatest of the many problems, and perhaps this must be dealt with in an opening essay. Where do you place Arthur? Malory believed he lived in the fifth century since he had Galahad take the Siege Perilous in 454 after the birth of Christ. He then proceeded to put his knights in fifteenth-century armor and impose the twelfth-thirteenth-century code of knighthood against a curious depopulated and ruined countryside, which reminds us of England after the first plague and ruined as the Wars of the Roses made it. His cities were fairy-tale, even Walt Disney affairs. But how would you dress a fifth-century dux bellorum, if you chose that time, particularly one who was Roman by breed and background? I know what the late Roman heavy cavalry wore and it had no relation to fifteenth-century cap-a-pie plate armor. The jousting spear was unknown, chivalry had not been invented.
One thing Malory did--he placed his time as BEFORE. Now there is a curious time and one I have tried to adopt. Time interval in the past is a very recent conception. Julius Caesar found no difficulty in being descended from Venus and didn't feel the event very remote. Herodotus makes his past a flat picture. Galahad is grandson eight times removed of Joseph of Aramathea and Lancelot 7th degree descended from Jesus Christ, although how that was accomplished I do not know. I am not being didactic here. And I may change after discussion. I have the following choices--I can choose a period and stick with it, making this whole work a period piece, which I don't like because these stories are universal; or I can, as did all the others, make the past a large composite curtain called "before." Now that is actually how most people see the past. In this pattern the lake village and the Tuscany merchant can both operate because both belong to the "before." The only things that cannot enter are the things of the "present," the "now." But on the other hand the human problems must all be of the now. Malory put all of his fifteenth-century problems in the "before." And I must put the problems of our time in the "before." I want you to argue with me about this. Maybe I am wrong. I believe these stories to be moral parables. Aesop put his wisdom and his morals in the mouths of animals. I must put it or rather them in the mouths of knights but it is the present I am writing about just as it was with Malory. Oddly enough, if I make it a period piece, it becomes their problem. But by setting it against a huge, timeless, almost formal curtain of the "before," I hope to make it doubly true of the "now." Do you see at all what I mean? And is it valid? I do feel that my introduction should deal with this problem, though. But we will discuss all of this long before we see print.
TO ERO--SOMERSET, AUGUST 22, 1959
The work doesn't jell. You know that and so do I. It isn't one piece yet. There is a time when all the preparation is done when it has to take shape and no one can do that but I. It must become one thing and that it hasn't as yet. Then I got to thinking that I am here and a room here is like a room in New York. I can bite my nails anywhere. And so I am going to spend my last time seeing rather than writing, storing things up. We hope to sail home about October 15 on the Flandre if we can get a reservation. The last two weeks or ten days we will spend in London. Lots I want to see there too. Then I will have a storehouse to draw on. And I am much better when I have seen a place. We'll
do the adjacent areas until September and when the traffic thins we'll go farther afield. And it will be just the two of us. I can't travel with anyone else. Then once home, I'll be on my own. And it is properly called the lonesomest profession in the world. Maybe then it will take form. Who knows? But there is a point beyond which no one can help until it is done. Then of course it is different.
But I think I am right about the storing process. I want to know the whole coastline from the Bristol Channel to Land's End. I learned so much from seeing the lake and noting the tides. And tides were very important.
Gerald Wellesley called to say that Sir Philip Antrobus, who owns both Stonehenge and Amesbury Abbey (where Guinevere died), is one of his oldest friends and will be delighted to give us the run of the place, which we will do as soon as I have a reply to a note. Now there's a name, Antrobus. Oxford "Place Names" has no original but says it is hardly English. I'll look up the family in Burke's as soon as I can get over to Alex Barclay's. Might it not be simply the Greek word anthropos, meaning a man? It surely isn't like any other British name I ever heard. Anyway, we will spend time there probably next week. The whole Salisbury complex fascinates me. It is probably the oldest center of population in all England. Maybe Sir Philip can get me access to Stonehenge to see closely the raising of the fallen stones now being done by the Ministry of Works. I want to see what was underneath. Might be more crossed axes. I will surely take my magnifying glasses so I can inspect closely. Also I want to take a long and critical look at Old Sarum. Sometimes when I squint my eyes I can see things truly. I spent most of the day Elaine was in London up on Cadbury hills wandering alone in the ditches. I know now why Caerleon is where it is but I have never read it. That's what I mean by tides. If in a boat, you catch an incoming tide at the mouth of the Usk, it will take you to Caerleon on one tide. And the same is true coming back. These things were very important. I know a lot about Camelot since wandering there by myself. It's a matter of sensing "how it was."